saw the 3rd one today -- The Battle of the Five Armies. i thought it was great, had a lot of cool action.

the story elements were a bit light, and not much really "happens" per se. The second probably had the best balance of story and action.

the first movie is definitely the weakest of them, but benefited from being a "return" the LOTR in my mind. I do like the "traveling and having adventures in the mean time" thing like Fellowship of the Ring had (which I also mostly rewatched yesterday)

it was too long and boring and had too many elves or dwarves or orcs or whatever. i dunno the difference between the races, I just know they're all dumb.

oh i think i saw the second or third one too. return of the king or the twin towers or something? I think it was the third one and that long haired dude returned and tried to be cool, but he wasn't. is that the third one? I think there was an eyeball on top of a tower too unless that was in the first one.

well, i definitely do recommend the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but if you're not into fantasy and the lore then it might not be that great for you. Hobbit is definitely way weaker, but i think it was fun and worth watching, although they will probably never get watched again by myself.

watched the third one. I can't believe that I'm saying that the first one was the best of the bunch, but it was. I left the theater feeling "...eh" about the 3rd movie. The action was just too silly at points, there were at least 3 times when my wife and I turned to each other and said "oh come on." At the action on screen. That scene with Legolas on the crumbling tower/bridge thing? They totally should've put some Mario-jump sound effects to that. And WTF was up with the deputy. There was literally no point for him to be there at all. Really at best this trilogy was sloppy.

ronito wrote:watched the third one. I can't believe that I'm saying that the first one was the best of the bunch, but it was. I left the theater feeling "...eh" about the 3rd movie. The action was just too silly at points, there were at least 3 times when my wife and I turned to each other and said "oh come on." At the action on screen. That scene with Legolas on the crumbling tower/bridge thing? They totally should've put some Mario-jump sound effects to that. And WTF was up with the deputy. There was literally no point for him to be there at all. Really at best this trilogy was sloppy.

the production definitely changed gears because it was supposed to be Guillermo del Toro doing it, but instead Jackson had to do it when that arrangement fell through.

i think when Jackson took over he felt like people were expecting grandiose battles, etc, and when they only had these movies as the last time they'd ever be able to make money off the Lord of the Rings, they stretched it out to 3 and this is what we got.

a Del Toro version of these may have been better movies, but probably would have had sucky action, as you can see with his Hellboy movies he doesn't really do action very well, but he does fantasy very well.

personally I sort of never really cared for the individual character story of Bilbo Baggins -- i was more interested in the larger scale geopolitical status of the world leading up to the Lord of the Rings, so i feel they are more "supplemental" in that regard than anything I'd care to watch on their own.

its like Extended Editions for the Lord of the Rings, sort of.

we'll probably see some sort of fan edit come around that condenses it to 1 movie, and it'll be interesting to see. I also wonder if there will be a studio "1 movie" cut they just sell on video as a way to diversify their offerings and charge more for the 3-movie boxset